A Gala That Skipped the Kitchen Sink

American Ballet Theater Gala at the Met Opera House

Trying to trot out an entire stable of stars and preview the many ballet war horses that dominate an eight-week season, American Ballet Theater’s opening-night galas can be tedious affairs. The one at the Metropolitan Opera House on Monday, though, was significantly less wearisome. The excerpts were fewer and more varied, and they were grounded by two full works of the highest quality and exhilaration: Alexei Ratmansky’s “Symphony #9” and Balanchine’s “Symphony in C.”

There were, of course, the customary pas de deux snipped out of narrative context. Replacing the explosive Natalia Osipova (absent because of injury), the sweet Xiomara Reyes was paired with the gale force of Ivan Vasiliev in the duet from “Le Corsaire,” a temperamental mismatch. David Hallberg, returning after his recovery from an injury, squired Hee Seo in the wedding pas de deux from “The Sleeping Beauty,” their coupling a happy marriage of unhurried grace.

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American Ballet Theater Ivan Vasiliev in “Le Corsaire” during the company’s opening-night gala at the Metropolitan Opera House.Credit
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

From “Onegin” came another pas de deux, this one for the always alluring Diana Vishneva and James Whiteside, a dancer of appealing brio who moved over from Boston Ballet last year. Its ordinary choreography was offset by a sparkling St. Petersburg ballroom setting and an ensemble doing a polonaise.

From Frederick Ashton’s “Sylvia” came Gillian Murphy and eight bounding huntresses, their sharp lines as deadly as their archer bows. (Fans of both Russian literature and Ashton might look forward to his “Month in the Country,” getting its company premiere next week and not excerpted here.)

Two works were new. Students from the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School looked impressive (despite one spill) in Raymond Lukens’s “Cortège.” And Marcelo Gomes’s duet for Julie Kent and a shirtless Roberto Bolle began with the kind of fluent, intimate partnering at which Mr. Gomes excels as a dancer. But his inexperience as a choreographer showed as he obscured the relationship with embroidery and sank it into melodrama.

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Julie Kent and Roberto Bolle of American Ballet Theater in “Apothéose,” choreographed by Marcelo Gomes.Credit
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

The music for this duet was the allegretto movement from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, and its title, “Apothéose,” presumably derives from Wagner’s comment that the score was the “apotheosis of dance.” Yet however dancelike, symphonies are notoriously difficult to choreograph. Balanchine’s 1947 treatment of Bizet’s Symphony in C is an exceptional masterpiece.

Ballet Theater hasn’t danced it in 10 years, and leading the challenging first movement, Paloma Herrera seemed out of practice. Yet Veronika Part, in the second one, came close to capturing the sustained grandeur that Balanchine likened to the moon gliding across the sky. In this ballet the sky — ostensibly the background of demi-soloists and ensemble, all clad in white — is just as engaging as the stars and satellites. Each of the four movements has its own cast of at least 12, and Ballet Theater has enough strength in its ranks to do justice to Balanchine’s assembled wonders.

Mr. Ratmansky’s dance to Shostakovich’s “Symphony #9,” which had its debut at City Center in October, looked uncorseted on the larger opera house stage and even richer in its Balanchinian balancing of individual and group activity, its threading of ebullience and disquiet. Some of its mystery arises from the way the dancers periodically look to the wings in apprehension. On Monday you could imagine that they were anticipating the arrival of the remaining two parts of Mr. Ratmansky’s Shostakovich triptych, coming May 31: the main event of this ballet season.

American Ballet Theater’s season continues through July 6 at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; (212) 362-6000, abt.org.

A version of this review appears in print on May 15, 2013, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Gala That Skipped the Kitchen Sink. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe